Question - Building a self sustaining portfolio

[123]

I just got started with IDNs and registered a couple of names. I found that some "not-too bad" names can still be bought or drop the best are long gone obviously.

My main concern is that there will be eventually a real market for many IDNs but no one knows exactly how long it will take for this market to develop.

which means you will have to pay for renewals in the meantime.

if one builds a portfolio of lets say 500 "somewhat-decent" names you will have to pay $5000/year for at least several years lets say 5 years = 25K in registration fees or even more if it takes longer.

From what i've read most IDNs don't generate enough income to pay for the renewals, the ones who do are usually not available anymore.

The names that i have for example don't really have any type-in traffic. So the chance that they will eventually be able to sustain themselves in the next few years are close to zero IMO.

The re-sale prices here on the board are low often close to reg-fee unless the name is really good.

So the first question would be:

Do you generate enough income from PPC parking and end-user sales(or other sales) to pay for the yearly reg-fees of your portfolio?

Or do you view this mostly as a long term investment where you are willing to spend money year after year until a real market develops.

The question that i am asking myself is: Wouldn't it be better instead of registering hundreds dropped free names or free names and paying tens of thousands for renewals to take that 25K and buy 50 good names which can sustain themselves and cost little to maintain. In the end there would be less risk of loss of capital since the renewal fees are negligible the prices are unlikely to drop long term and at least some ppc revenue is there and reselling them is possible.

Second question: End-User Sales

Are end user sales an effective mean to pay for your reg-fees or even pay for for new purchases?

I don't mean high figure sales but the occasional $200-500 sale for lesser names and maybe low xxxx for good names.

Do you think that with the names that are still available or drop and can be registered for reg-fee you can still build a portfolio which is self sustaining due the occasional end-user sale?

Are the end user sales limited to certain markets? If so which ones?

Third question: My first domain purchases

I spent some time looking at drop lists, and tried to hand-reg a few names. This was just a small experiment, i understand that the names aren't that good really. I didn't look at PPC pricing, google exact searches. I mean i did to confirm that the term was searched but high number of search wasn't a buying criteria.

I just looked for names that would be considered good/attractive if they were english .com versions.

bankowość.com (banking) polish

جليد.com (ice) arabic
مرحاض.com (toilet)
سوقالأوراقالمالية.com (stock exchange? Stock market? Securities? Security market?)
أحجاركريمة.com (gemstone)
كرةالمضرب.com tennis

coréia.com (korea) portuguese
arábia.com (arabia)
prépago.com (prepay)
grãbretanha.com (great britain)
acomodações.com (accomodations)

デザイナーズ.com (designers?) japanese

Some of the names were possibly not translated properly or do do not look attractive to native speakers.

What's your opinion? Is this junk?

thanks

[bumblebee man]

Welcome to the forum!


So the first question would be:

Do you generate enough income from PPC parking and end-user sales(or other sales) to pay for the yearly reg-fees of your portfolio?

Or do you view this mostly as a long term investment where you are willing to spend money year after year until a real market develops.

The question that i am asking myself is: Wouldn't it be better instead of registering hundreds dropped free names or free names and paying tens of thousands for renewals to take that 25K and buy 50 good names which can sustain themselves and cost little to maintain. In the end there would be less risk of loss of capital since the renewal fees are negligible the prices are unlikely to drop long term and at least some ppc revenue is there and reselling them is possible.


I'd vote for the latter. I'd rather have 50 great names than 500 average ones for the reasons you already mentioned.


Second question: End-User Sales

Are end user sales an effective mean to pay for your reg-fees or even pay for for new purchases?

I don't mean high figure sales but the occasional $200-500 sale for lesser names and maybe low xxxx for good names.

Do you think that with the names that are still available or drop and can be registered for reg-fee you can still build a portfolio which is self sustaining due the occasional end-user sale?

Are the end user sales limited to certain markets? If so which ones?


It's definitely possible. Actually I'm in overall profit zone right now. Parking revenue and forum sales are only a fraction of total income in my case. It took about a year of learning though.

Markets: Mainly Europe / Latin script in my case but this could change quickly with IDN.IDN for non-Latin.

I'll pass on your third questions to the natives.

[Jay]

Wouldn't it be better instead of registering hundreds dropped free names or free names and paying tens of thousands for renewals to take that 25K and buy 50 good names which can sustain themselves and cost little to maintain.

Yes, in theory.

[Ryu]

デザイナーズ.com (designers?) japanese

What's your opinion? Is this junk?

This is transliteration of English "designer's," "designers'" or "designers." It's actually me who dropped the name. I would certainly not say it's a junk as I lived with it for a couple of years. The problem though with this name is that it usually doesn't stand alone, as the standard translation of English designers is デザイナー without ズ(s). In Japanese, we do not generally distinguish singular and plurals though there are some exceptions to the rule.

In my view, デザイナーズ.com is a fine brandable name that could be used for websites of designers shops or about designers' mansions, etc. Unfortunately it does not make enough parking income to cover renewals, or else I would have kept it.

[sunsei21]

i don't think there is a one size fits all strategy. best advice is do what is affordable because nobody really knows how the market will pan out just yet .

[Ryu]

i don't think there is a one size fits all strategy. best advice is do what is affordable because nobody really knows how the market will pan out just yet .

Very true. And you should be prepared to make lots of mistakes. I've been IDNing for about 5 years and I still reg/catch plenty of bad names. At times I even drop names I caught using snapnames.

[idn]

Unfortunately it does not make enough parking income to cover renewals, or else I would have kept it.

Is this true for all your domains or do you have plenty of exceptions?

[idn]

At times I even drop names I caught using snapnames.

Me too. Every year.

[Ryu]

Is this true for all your domains or do you have plenty of exceptions?

I keep plenty that earn only a dollar or two a year. But if a name is .com and earns absolutely nothing, I'd be probably dropping the name.


Me too. Every year.

Glad to know I'm not alone.^^ It hurts!

[IdnHost]

I keep plenty that earn only a dollar or two a year. But if a name is .com and earns absolutely nothing, I'd be probably dropping the name.




Glad to know I'm not alone.^^ It hurts!

Do you guys think once idn.idn is implemented that the parking revenue for .com domains in general is going to jump to the roof or is this shift going to be more of a slow gradual one that might take up to 3-5 years before a decent quality name (ie. office.com) in chinese, hindi, japanese, russian or arabic will earn $100.00+/month?

[Ryu]

Do you guys think once idn.idn is implemented that the parking revenue for .com domains in general is going to jump to the roof

No. I don't think so.

or is this shift going to be more of a slow gradual one that might take up to 3-5 years before a decent quality name (ie. office.com) in chinese, hindi, japanese, russian or arabic will earn $100.00+/month?

That's what I wish. But it really depends on what you mean by a decent name. After all, I think it's only very good names that would ever make $100.00+/month through parking.

[Jay]

if a name is .com and earns absolutely nothing, I'd be probably dropping the name.

I think this is generally sound advice. The exception is if there is a good explanation for why a name isn't getting revenue - e.g., from a country with few advertisers. Certainly if a Japanese name wasn't getting a dollar or two, you would think twice about keeping it. But if it is from an emerging market and it is getting a decent number of visitors, that might be a different story.

[IdnHost]

No. I don't think so.



That's what I wish. But it really depends on what you mean by a decent name. After all, I think it's only very good names that would ever make $100.00+/month through parking.

I would assume that names such as sex,auto,hotels, and other such premium examples in these top 5 scripts would bring in a lot more $ then just $100/month. Call me crazy but i thought the ascii Equivalents were raking in $ xxx bucks a day in their prime.
Or is that just wishful thinking? :)

[123]

Or is that just wishful thinking

maybe maybe not. i read(not sure if true)

sex.com was making millions per year from type-ins in it's early days. Hotels(or hotel.com?) would pay for itself within a few years(probably not with ppc parking)

I think the problem is that ppc parking revenues are no longer what they used to be so it's hard to make a lot of money with parking today.

But i think a really good idn name could make much more than $100/month if idns become popular.

I am not really an expert when it comes to this as i never had a good revenue generating name before.

ryu,

thank you for the insight.

[IdnHost]

at one point I read an article somewhere on the internet that sex.com (ascii) was pulling in approximately $40,000/month.
Based on this logic, i figured eventually there is no reason why a premium idn.idn cannot collect low xxx to mid xxx a day in parking revenue.

using this same logic would mean that a decent idn could easily make $ xx a day in parking revenue assuming of course that the idn market will be at par or more sucessfull in its prime then its counterpart ascii.

[squirrel]

IdnHost : premium ASCII at their prime topped 1K a day. Read the article "Master of their domains", I'm pretty sure it mentions cellphone(s).com making 1K a day. Also keep in mind that this article was written 1 year or so before parking peaked.

123 : Some IDNs make more than 100$/month already. Read this forum and you'll find posts where owners were kind enough to share their stats.

Also guys keep in mind that Rev is determined by 3 things: traffic, CTR and CPC.

[123]

123 : Some IDNs make more than 100$/month already. Read this forum and you'll find posts where owners were kind enough to share their stats.

yes i already knew that. i wanted to mention that in my previous post. That's why i wrote a really good name could make much more than $100/month.

[squirrel]

Another thing: there is a difference between a premium domain and a good parking performer. I doubt anyone here would want to develop a typo domain, yet lots of ascii typo names earn their fair share in parking revenues.

To answer the original question : just get quality names. If you want to spend $$ on the after market for what you consider better names, go ahead. If you want to try your luck with hand registration, go ahead. Check the latest figures for registration by script kindly published my mulligan, you'll see there is still room for the total registration in the .com IDN space to grow multiple times.

Lastly, if any of you has had the opportunity to read the comments or talk with older ASCII guys, you'll find that none of them ever complained about having had too many domains. It's quite the opposite actually, some of them wished they had regged more, or did not wasted their time trying to develop big website projects while there was still opportunities to add to their portfolio.

[IdnHost]

IdnHost : premium ASCII at their prime topped 1K a day. Read the article "Master of their domains", I'm pretty sure it mentions cellphone(s).com making 1K a day. Also keep in mind that this article was written 1 year or so before parking peaked.

123 : Some IDNs make more than 100$/month already. Read this forum and you'll find posts where owners were kind enough to share their stats.

Also guys keep in mind that Rev is determined by 3 things: traffic, CTR and CPC.

I think i stumbled upon that article a year ago as well because it does ring a bell. I am curious however to know how much $ is cellphone(s) within any of the main five or six scripts earning at the moment per month.

[123]

Another thing: there is a difference between a premium domain and a good parking performer. I doubt anyone here would want to develop a typo domain, yet lots of ascii typo names earn their fair share in parking revenues.


true. i heard somewhere that a really big portion from ascii parking revenue is from typo traffic sadly. I think typos are a way to get a lot of traffic for some domainers if the good ascii generics are no longer available.

some-typos can generate so much traffic because the real term is a large and developed website and has massive type-in traffic for that reason.

personally i would not want to follow such a strategy... would possibly lead to horrible CTRs and probably harm the income of genuine type-in generics by diluting overall traffic quality.

[123]

I think i stumbled upon that article a year ago as well because it does ring a bell. I am curious however to know how much $ is cellphone(s) within any of the main five or six scripts earning at the moment per month.

buy the names and then let us know :D

what would be really interesting is what the names will earn in 5-10 years.

[IdnHost]

buy the names and then let us know :D

what would be really interesting is what the names will earn in 5-10 years.

i'm afraid whoever is holding them is not willing to give them up, at least not so early in the game. but yeah, maybe someone on this forum that is privillaged to have aquired such a name in anyone of the mentioned scripts would like to share.

[squirrel]

It depends,

cell phones in many scripts is a 2 word domains. 2 word domains tend to not perform well (at least to my knowledge) because a lot of the current traffic comes from browsers that append ".com" at the end of a query in the URL bar. so a word like "cell phone" would be transformed to "cell phone.com" which would not resolve (or if ".com" is not appended because its a 2 word domain, the redirection just doesn't take place). However, a one word word like "dreams" for example, could get lots of traffic because everytime someone types it in opera and safari (incl. in apple devices), they would be redirected to dreams.com


That's why I think there is no point really in trying to guess future traffic numbers until after IDN.IDN is live and people start using them.

[squirrel]

true. i heard somewhere that a really big portion from ascii parking revenue is from typo traffic sadly. I think typos are a way to get a lot of traffic for some domainers if the good ascii generics are no longer available.

some-typos can generate so much traffic because the real term is a large and developed website and has massive type-in traffic for that reason.

personally i would not want to follow such a strategy... would possibly lead to horrible CTRs and probably harm the income of genuine type-in generics by diluting overall traffic quality.


Some of the best quality converting traffic is from typos of generics.

A typo of "life insurance" is just like "lifeinsurance.com" for the purpose of parking. The only issue with the typo domains is that you can't really develop it or use it for email, ads, etc. because it's a typo..

[JamesD]

Some of the best quality converting traffic is from typos of generics.

A typo of "life insurance" is just like "lifeinsurance.com" for the purpose of parking. The only issue with the typo domains is that you can't really develop it or use it for email, ads, etc. because it's a typo..

An option with a name like that, is to build a site on a correctly spelt domain like "bestlifeinsurance.com" (just an example) and redirect the traffic, then you've got a brand and natural quality traffic.

[Wot]

You won't go far wrong buying here in the auctions & sales threads with for the most part quality names going for peanuts as the main market for IDN is here and very limited to between the members.

Other than that it is predominately German IDN that seem to sell at places like Sedo.

Drops of course, and there are many of them, but you have to be very selective and check,check & re check.

Welcome and good luck.

[123]

You won't go far wrong buying here in the auctions & sales threads with for the most part quality names going for peanuts as the main market for IDN is here and very limited to between the members.

Other than that it is predominately German IDN that seem to sell at places like Sedo.

Drops of course, and there are many of them, but you have to be very selective and check,check & re check.

Welcome and good luck.

Thank you for the advice! :)

[blackpower]

I just got started with IDNs and registered a couple of names. I found that some "not-too bad" names can still be bought or drop the best are long gone obviously.

My main concern is that there will be eventually a real market for many IDNs but no one knows exactly how long it will take for this market to develop.

which means you will have to pay for renewals in the meantime.

if one builds a portfolio of lets say 500 "somewhat-decent" names you will have to pay $5000/year for at least several years lets say 5 years = 25K in registration fees or even more if it takes longer.

From what i've read most IDNs don't generate enough income to pay for the renewals, the ones who do are usually not available anymore.

The names that i have for example don't really have any type-in traffic. So the chance that they will eventually be able to sustain themselves in the next few years are close to zero IMO.

The re-sale prices here on the board are low often close to reg-fee unless the name is really good.

So the first question would be:

Do you generate enough income from PPC parking and end-user sales(or other sales) to pay for the yearly reg-fees of your portfolio?

Or do you view this mostly as a long term investment where you are willing to spend money year after year until a real market develops.

The question that i am asking myself is: Wouldn't it be better instead of registering hundreds dropped free names or free names and paying tens of thousands for renewals to take that 25K and buy 50 good names which can sustain themselves and cost little to maintain. In the end there would be less risk of loss of capital since the renewal fees are negligible the prices are unlikely to drop long term and at least some ppc revenue is there and reselling them is possible.

Second question: End-User Sales

Are end user sales an effective mean to pay for your reg-fees or even pay for for new purchases?

I don't mean high figure sales but the occasional $200-500 sale for lesser names and maybe low xxxx for good names.

Do you think that with the names that are still available or drop and can be registered for reg-fee you can still build a portfolio which is self sustaining due the occasional end-user sale?

Are the end user sales limited to certain markets? If so which ones?

Third question: My first domain purchases

I spent some time looking at drop lists, and tried to hand-reg a few names. This was just a small experiment, i understand that the names aren't that good really. I didn't look at PPC pricing, google exact searches. I mean i did to confirm that the term was searched but high number of search wasn't a buying criteria.

I just looked for names that would be considered good/attractive if they were english .com versions.

bankowość.com (banking) polish

جليد.com (ice) arabic
مرحاض.com (toilet)
سوقالأوراقالمالية.com (stock exchange? Stock market? Securities? Security market?)
أحجاركريمة.com (gemstone)
كرةالمضرب.com tennis

coréia.com (korea) portuguese
arábia.com (arabia)
prépago.com (prepay)
grãbretanha.com (great britain)
acomodações.com (accomodations)

デザイナーズ.com (designers?) japanese

Some of the names were possibly not translated properly or do do not look attractive to native speakers.

What's your opinion? Is this junk?

thanks
I am not a native speaker, however:
coréia.com (korea) portuguese - according to new orthorgaphy rules, there is no accent in this case (words ending in eia)
http://www.sme.pmmc.com.br/arquivos/matrizes/matrizes_portugues/anexos/texto-23.pdf
arábia.com (arabia) - nice, but in general I would stick to commercial terms, portuguese is still full of opportunities
prépago.com (prepay) - mmmm, i don't know... pré-pago is correct, when it's one word, accent actually makes it say wrongly.
grãbretanha.com (great britain) - correct
acomodações.com (accomodations) - correct

[123]

arábia.com (arabia) - nice, but in general I would stick to commercial terms,

i felt this was a "tourism" related keyword. (maybe)

i did register a highly commercial term yesterday but in spanish not portuguese:

créditopersonal.com

i like that one.

It has a flaw however. According to google surfers are far more likely to type credito than crédito so this may greatly diminuish it's value.

[blackpower]

i felt this was a "tourism" related keyword. (maybe)

i did register a highly commercial term yesterday but in spanish not portuguese:

créditopersonal.com

i like that one.

It has a flaw however. According to google surfers are far more likely to type credito than crédito so this may greatly diminuish it's value.

It does not matter how people type :)
What matters is what is correct.
Speaking of accents typing, traffic to é have been steadily increasing in potuguese from Brasil.
Spanish speaking in this regard are probably like users from Portugal-don't care much about accents other than ñ (yet)
I thought, Brasil will take much longer to get used to accents but it's picking up quite nicely

[123]

do you happen to know the difference between "bein imoveis" and "imoveis" (real estate).

i regged benimoveis.net

[blackpower]

bein does not exist :o
what there is, is bens imóveis (http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im%C3%B3vel) (Real property), but it is not used in the commercial real estate sense

[123]

sorry i meant

bensimóveis.net

there is an active brazilian website with the name

www.bensimoveis.com.br

[blackpower]

sorry i meant

bensimóveis.net

there is an active brazilian website with the name

www.bensimoveis.com.br

Yes, and RealProperty.net is an active site too :)

[alpha]

Just curious: why are you messing around with latin idns?

Unlike non-latin (aka idn.idn), there's no reason why latin idns shouldn't be "selling like hot cakes". The fact they are not right now is a death-knell is it not?

If I was just starting out, it would be the last place I would dig

[123]

Just curious: why are you messing around with latin idns?

Unlike non-latin (aka idn.idn), there's no reason why latin idns shouldn't be "selling like hot cakes". The fact they are not right now is a death-knell is it not?

If I was just starting out, it would be the last place I would dig

you're probably right. i just couldn't resist buying some as many good latin names can still be hand-regged.

another thing: is 50k exact searches in .net a good name in arabic?

http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%AB%D9%84%D8%AC%D8%A7%D8%AA

i regged: icecream.net :)

[jose]

acomodações? bens imóveis? Is that Brazilian? Never heard that terms. (I am Portuguese)

[123]

a few thoughts on spanish and portuguese names:

i don't want to promote latin IDNs really and i don't think they are the best IDN investments.. it's clear that the com in latin idns will always be a secondary extension.

still there are some reasons why they may not be that bad:

the spanish community is incredibly large - 400 million native speakers

even in the US there are are almost 50 million spanish speakers. for someone living in the US the com may be a primary extension.

the spanish community is distributed across many countries. if a site wants to reach the global spanish community a .com would probably be the primary choice and extension.

[123]

acomodações? bens imóveis? Is that Brazilian? Never heard that terms. (I am Portuguese)

i don't know. i hope so :)

google the term. some websites seem to use them.

[Jay]

it's clear that the com in latin idns will always be a secondary extension.

That could be true in some countries (e.g. Brazil and Germany), but in the main the issue is that the ASCII.com is preferred over the IDN.com (for now at least).

[123]

That could be true in some countries (e.g. Brazil and Germany), but in the main the issue is that the ASCII.com is preferred over the IDN.com (for now at least).

yes but i think we are still in the early stages. so it's hard to say how things will be long term IMO.

it's an interesting question:

which name will be more valuable long term?

a properly written name (IDN)

a simplified version without the accents?

latin idn with accents will be causing some confusion among internet surfers(they will sometimes type ascii.com instead of idn.com and vice versa) as well so a company may want to own both ASCII and IDN.com

[blackpower]

a few thoughts on spanish and portuguese names:

i don't want to promote latin IDNs really and i don't think they are the best IDN investments.. it's clear that the com in latin idns will always be a secondary extension.
.

I happen to think that latins idns (especially Portuguese) are the best and safest investment :)
The logic here is simple;
-No political risks and rapidly developing into local superpower
-Brazil is in the USA ' natural sphere of interest, the ties between two countries will develop exponentially (already brazilians buy huge number of properties in US , Florida especially)
Some even predict that after US defaults on it's debt (some think it's inevitable), US will retreat to Americas and dump the rest of the world crumbling
-The two continents will be self-sustaining and have united economy, one currency (Amero) and .com as preferred extention
-many other advantages i will not mention :)

[bwhhisc]

Some even predict that after US defaults on it's debt (some think it's inevitable), US will retreat to Americas and dump the rest of the world


interesting take on the subject....

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html

[123]

I happen to think that latins idns (especially Portuguese) are the best and safest investment :)


i am not sure if they are the "best" investment but some latin IDNs changes are useful.

the question is which ones will be useful and which not? one has to really understand the language to know this.

i am a german native speaker for example and i can tell you that ü,ö,ä are quite nice in domain names. THE ß however isn't that useful IMO.

a name like bücher.de(books) is definitely much better than buecher.de(acceptaböe because people got used to it) and bucher.de (not good because the name loses it's meaning and looks unprofessional)

so long term bücher.de will be far more worth than buecher.de and of course bucher.de(which probably wouldn't be used anyway) IMO (if it isn't already)

the "ß" however can be replaced by a double s "ss" without harming the name or meaning.

take straße.de (street) for example. I would prefer strasse.de to be honest.

[blackpower]

interesting take on the subject....

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html

interesting book here
How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly - And the Stark Choices that Lie Ahead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dambisa_Moyo

Basically it's being discussed for some time...
The US will have to make a decision, dump the debt and reindustrialize if it wants to keep superiority

[123]

I happen to think that latins idns (especially Portuguese) are the best and safest investment :)


i think portuguese has been neglected a bit.

With a total of 236 million speakers, Portuguese is the 6th most spoken language in the world, the 3rd most spoken language in the western hemisphere, and the most spoken language in the southern hemisphere.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_language

it's quite crazy maybe i am blind but pool.com doesn't even portuguese in their IDN drop down selection, they even have icelandic. weird.

http://www.pool.com/addBackorders.aspx

[bwhhisc]

it's quite crazy maybe i am blind but pool.com doesn't even portuguese in their IDN drop down selection, they even have icelandic. weird.

Nor Turkish and many others....including French, Thai, and Vietnamese